Transcript

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>> The FBI hunting for details Thursday on the activities of Harold Martin III, the NSA contractor charged with stealing highly classified information from the US spy agency. The question, whether Martin could have been involved with the leak of ultra secret hacking tools the NSA used to break into computers in Russia and China.

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Those tools dumped onto public websites in August by a group calling itself Shadow Brokers. The 51-year old arrested the same month at his home in Maryland, outside of Washington. Senior National Security Reporter, Mark Hosenball.>> The government just doesn't know yet whether this guy Martin, for sure, was involved with that group.

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As I understand it, they seem to be pretty uncertain as to what this guy's motive was. Some people even say that this guy maybe a hoarder or something. In other words, apparently, he had large of amounts data, large amounts of documents. So, one of the court documents that I read said that he had terabytes full of data, I guess, in his garage.

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There's no suggestion that he was in contact with any foreign intelligence agency. At this point, there's no suggestion to that. There's no suggestion he was offering this stuff for sale. So, whole thing's a little bit of a mystery.>> This case inviting comparisons to NSA leaker Edward Snowden who's massive trove of stolen documents exposed the reach of NSA's surveillance programs.

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Martin worked at the same consulting firm as Snowden, Booz Allen Hamilton, raising questions whether security measures put in place after Snowden went far enough.>> It was the government that gave him the security clearance. It was the government. He worked in the government office, not for Booz Allen.

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So, the government at least bears equal responsibility, if not, greater responsibility. As I understand it, he was assigned to what they call SIGINT, signals intelligence operations, which is offensive intelligence collection. In other words, they go out and spy on people rather than the other main thing that NSA does, which is cybersecurity.

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So, this kind was a spy of some kind.>> The Justice Department has charged Martin with stealing classified government material. If convicted on the most serious charges, he could face up to ten years in prison.